There was no pomp and circumstance, no procession with classmates, but on Friday a school district in Illinois finally handed Alva Early his high school diploma — more than five decades after he attended Galesburg High School. In 1959, Galesburg banned Earley from graduating and denied him a diploma after he and other African-Americans had a picnic in a park that was unofficially off-limits to blacks. Read More.

In Chicago, Neighborhoods That Are More Black Don’t Gentrify

So here’s one way folks tend to think about gentrification in big cities: Poorer (therefore: browner) neighborhood becomes more attractive to folks of more means (therefore: whiter) who are in search of lower housing costs. As more and more better-off folks move in, new amenities and fresh investment follow. And that, in turn, brings more demand for the neighborhood among potential gentrifiers, which pushes up housing costs and drives out the people of color who lived there before. A new study by Harvard researchers suggests that there’s also a racial ceiling to how neighborhoods gentrify, at least in Chicago, the city they examined. Robert Sampson and Jackelyn Hwang found that neighborhoods that are more black tend to stay that way. Read More.

Fired Miami Cop Reinstated After Shooting Unarmed Man

The Miami Police Department has reinstated a detective who was fired last year after shooting an unarmed black man nearly three years ago, the Miami Herald reports. The department’s firing of Reynaldo Goyos was overturned Friday after an arbitrator reviewed the case, the Herald writes, and “ordered the department to return him to his job no later than Aug. 13, with full back pay.” Sgt. Javier Ortiz, president of Miami’s Fraternal Order of Police, released a statement praising the decision. Read More.Where Is Missing DC-Area 8-Year-Old Relisha Rudd?

Nearly six months after 8-year-old Relisha Rudd disappeared from a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., her whereabouts are still unknown, and the police investigation appears to have stalled, the Washington Post reports. The prospect of finding her alive is poor, police have said, especially after a man in whose company she was last seen was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head shortly after her disappearance. Read More.How Black Men Are Benefiting From Workplace Drug Tests

Last week, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a study with results that some may have found surprising: it found that drug tests in the workplace are a good thing for African-American men. Thanks to the testing, these men are hired more and earn higher wages. “It’s a counterintuitive study. The economist who wrote this kind of knew going into it and wanted to test it,” Max Taves, who wrote the piece, told host Marc Lamont Hillon HuffPost Live on Friday. “What it means is that companies’ information, their perception of African-Americans employees relative to white employees and drug use is wrong.” Read More.

These Mothers Lost Their Sons To The NYPD, And They Vow ‘This Has To Stop’

They all know each other, having met at this rally or that funeral. For years, these women — all black or Latino — have stood in front of cameras, holding photographs of their sons. The NYPD, they say, murdered their children, and the officers involved have never been held accountable. Many of these mothers gathered in Lower Manhattan Wednesday evening to meet with Philip Eure, the new NYPD inspector general, a watchdog position created last year amid outrage over the department’s controversial stop-and-frisk crime-fighting tactic. Read More.